if the church might possess a deep communal reality at its core.


Living by Faith


Thanks be to God for our relationship with your church family. Very genuine ly,


physically seeing many of I mi s s


you, sharing conversation and knowing what’s going on in your family and life. The unseen bonds we share in the faith unite us nonetheless and they are as real as the tastiest scone and the fresh dew I often smelled and felt as I walked the Recreation Ground.


August book review


Total Church: A radical reshaping around gospel and community. By Tim Chester and Steve Timmis.


On my recent sabbatical I took a small collection of books to read on the nature of the church. I started with Stott’s The Living Church which is a good basic introduction for anyone wanting to start thinking about the subject. I read Dynamic Diversity by Milne which has al ready been reviewed in BGH and very helpfully looks at the church through the eyes of the letter to the Ephesians. The church is a reconciled community and includes all kinds of people through the grace and mercy of God. This should therefore be evident in the gathering of Christians in a local community. This is all very helpful as we work


towards partnership with Christchurch. I read the Provocative Church by Tomlin which was very strong on the words and works of Jesus working t o g e t h e r i n t h e proclamation of God’s kingdom and the church as an evangel i s t ic community. It included some excellent study questions at the end of each chapter . My personal favourite and the one which engaged me the most with its Biblical analysis of the nature and task of the church was Total Church by Chester and Timmis.


Gospel and Community


The basic thesis of Total Church is that the Church is defined by two principles that of gospel and community. Gospel can be divided into two parts, the first of which is that the gospel is word centred (the gospel is truth), the second is that the gospel is mission centred (the gospel truth needs to be proclaimed). The second principle of community is the context in which the gospel operates, so that the


We keep on keeping on, living according to unseen realities, unseen ways of valuing and unseen definitions of success, all based on the Lord as our one and only anchor. I think it’s another way of saying “we live by faith”. May each of us find commendation from God


community is built up and strengthened through the gospel word and also reaches out and grows through the sharing of that word with the world, particularly from the basis of authentic community.


These principles are then appl ied to church planting, evangelism, apologe t i c s , soc ial involvement, leadership, discipleship, pastoral care, world mission and notions of success.


Challenge


There is much that is challenging in this book, particularly as it makes us look at the way we do church and ask how we are doing at community or in our interaction with the poor on our doorstep. There is a very strong challenge to evangelical Christianity in the UK which is largely middle c l as s and perpetuates middleclass leadership types when the Bible and Jesus reveal that the Gospel is to be good news to the poor.


Thought provoking


I need to read the book a second time over the summer because there is so much in it that is p r o v o c a t i v e a n d wholesome and needs more time to chew over. There are one or two things that one might disagree with, but even then the style of the book


www.stgeorgeschurch.net


by the perspectives and hopes that oriented our living whilst in this short life (Hebrews 11, in which I ’ve recently been preaching).


In partnership for the good news of Christ,


James and Anna


forces you to try and think clearly about what it is that you disagree with and why.


In the autumn the small groups will be following the same material through October which comes from these two authors in a series of studies called Gospel centred Church. It wo u l d b e g r e a t preparation for those studies if over the summer months you went to CLC ordered a copy of Total Church and read much of the background material to those studies. I hope that you find it as engaging and helpful as I have done. Incidentally, my father read the book b e f o r e me a n d commented how he wished it had been written years ago so that he had read it when in full time ministry.


By Martyn Taylor


October


Homegroup Study bGh_9


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